Best Time Of Day For Sprints

If you're going to get in some high-intensity interval training sitting on a stationary bike, what's the best time of day for optimizing your performance? A study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine offers some insight with research conducted on 12 healthy male subjects.

In randomized order, subjects performed three all-out sprints at either 6AM or 6PM. Researchers measured total work, peak power and EMG, which is the electrical activity produced by muscles. Evening workouts permitted more work at a greater percentage of peak power, even though there weren't any significant differences in EMG between times of day.

True Strength Moment: Previous studies have suggested that weight training workouts are best performed in the evening compared to mornings, but other research has shown that your body's internal clock will reset to your time of day preference for training. That may be the case with cycle sprinting sessions.